1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device for assisting young children with learning to stand and walk. The device is highly portable, allowing parents to bring it along when the family goes to visit friends or relatives, or to play outside. The padded support rails and base provide a child with a stable, safe place to play while learning to walk.
The task of supporting a child while he or she learns to walk has posed a challenge parents and caregivers. Adults must be vigilant and watch over a child while in the home or outdoor environment, making sure that steady objects are available for the child to use for balance. A baby who is learning to take his or her first steps may grab couches, chairs, various household furniture, and even pets. Parents have become creative over the years at crafting safe trails of graspable objects that children can use for balance while walking. However, problems arise when the family goes on the road, goes outside or when the child is not carefully monitored while inside the home. Objects of appropriate height and stability may be lacking in the surrounding environment, or further still interior objects such as hard furniture may post a risk to a child given their lack of motor skills and their tendency to easily fall over. Hard objects or corners of furniture utilized as support can then become an impact hazard for the falling child. These items, and the lack of such support while away from the home, provide a child with an environment lacking in suitable or safe support for practicing his or her burgeoning motor skills. A portable play environment is therefore desired that provides children learning to walk with a safe, comfortable, and stable area to stand up and walk along, while also providing a readily portable assembly that improves transporting the device to areas away from the home.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The present invention provides safety and stability to young children learning to stand up and walk. Children can use the padded rails to pull themselves up, to lean on and to assist with establishing balance. The invention is easily collapsible into a self-contained portable unit with handles for easy asportation by a parent or caregiver. Devices currently known in the portable walking assistant art do not recite the same structural elements as the present invention and thus do not provide it's advantages to a user.
Some portable play devices comprise a complete enclosure with four sides, mesh netting walls and a foldable bottom. These devices, such as the exemplary invention disclosed by Welsh, Jr., U.S. Pat. No. 6,421,850 are essentially collapsible playpens. The supporting frame is permanently affixed to the base, unlike the present device, which provides a support structure that can be completely disassembled for ease of transport. When portable playpens are collapsed they remain bulky and cumbersome to carry. The base folds up and is pressed in between two sidewalls, resulting in a large, unwieldy shape. Conversely, the present invention has a base that folds in half and creates a pocket for a user to carry the disassembled support structure in.
A similar device is taught by Yang et al U.S. Pat. No. 6,343,390, which describes a foldable support structure for a play yard. Yang differs from Welsh in that the support bars of Yang are individually foldable. Yang comprises a skeleton of support bars, secured to form a cube-like shape. Each support bar is formed from two bars joined at the middle by a folding joint. This structure allows the device to fold into a more compressed shape than standard portable playpens such as that of Welsh. Though it's structure makes Yang easier to manipulate it still suffers from the drawback that its structural elements are permanently affixed.
Monaghan, U.S. Pat. No. 7,713,175 discloses another skeletal frame device. A It comprises an upper rectangular frame, a lower rectangular frame having a larger width than the upper frame, and four support posts that join the upper and lower rectangular frame together. In use a child is placed within the upper rectangular frame so that his or her hands rest on the frame, and the child then walks the length of the device, supported by the upper rectangular frame. The device of Monaghan is not collapsible, and the only method of compressing its volume is to disassemble the device. This makes it difficult to transport and potentially impossible to fit in a small or mid-size car. The Monaghan invention is thus impracticable for travelling families.
The devices of Welsh, Yang, and Monaghan all provide four supports that encircle a walking child. This makes it more difficult to place a child in the device because he or she must be carefully manipulated between the supports. The present invention has one open side allowing for easy placement and removal of a child within the device.
Starks, et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,902,000 describes a child walking trainer that comprises two handle bars secured to a base by telescoping support bars. The height of the handlebars can be increased or decreasing by extending or lowering the support bars. The bars are secured to the base by u-shaped clamps that removably secure to the side of the base. Securement by such means is problematic because a stumbling child can knock the clamp off the side of the mat, causing the handle bar to collapse. The present invention solves this problem and provides a more stable structure by removably securing the support legs through apertures in the base mat, making the support legs harder to knock out of position and decreasing the likelihood that a child will fall due to failing supports.
The prior art fails to disclose an easily collapsible children's walking trainer that is structurally sound enough to withstand stumbling children, but portable enough to be convenient for travel use. The present invention provides an easy to disassemble and collapse walking trainer that can be carried to a variety of locations. It is not bulky, cumbersome or prohibitively large, making it ideal for use in areas outside the home. It substantially diverges in design elements from the prior art and consequently it is clear that there is a need in the art for an improvement to existing devices. In this regard the instant invention substantially fulfills these needs.